10 ms·

Microsoft employees recall their early years

162 points by rmason 2y ago

JKCalhoun 2y ago
https://archive.ph/WIAoq https://archive.ph/WIAoq
lvl155 2y ago
What’s cool about MSFT and APPLE is that there will never be another company like those two. They are true trailblazers in so many ways.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- bushbaba 2y ago
  Amazon? Google? Meta? Tencent? etc etc etc
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    Google is an ad company that can’t make another significant product to save its life. Meta under Zuckerberg has been able to stay relevant. But FB is already seen as being for old people.
  - CharlesW 2y ago
    Apple and Microsoft (as well as companies like Commodore) were there for personal computing’s birth. Amazon, Google and Meta came far later and didn’t invent their respective industries.
    - 9rx 2y ago
      HP sold what they called a "personal computer" in the 1960s, well before Apple and Microsoft came around. It wasn't exactly what we consider to be a personal computer nowadays, but MySpace wasn't exactly what we consider social media to be today either. I'm not sure these things happen in discrete steps like you seem to imply. There is a clear continuum. I think it is quite fair to say, for example, that Meta help define its industry like Microsoft and Apple helped define theirs. There will never be exact replicas of Apple and Microsoft again, but there undoubtedly will be many companies in the future that we will eventually look back upon in the same way.
      - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
        You are confusing the first personal computer with the rise of personal computing. Inventing a product isn’t very useful if you don’t invent the product market as well.
        9rx 2y ago
        Huh? The entire comment is about that rise. Did you stop reading after the first few words?
    - pests 2y ago
      Amazon did quite literally invent their respective industries - AWS and the cloud?
- breadwinner 2y ago
  That's absurd. Trailblazer means a pioneer; an innovator. Apple is one. Microsoft isn't. Microsoft is known for copying ideas, not for innovating. If there is one thing that hasn't changed in 50 years, it is the fact that they don't innovate. Take their recent products: Teams is a copy of Slack. Loop is a copy of Notion. This has been going on throughout their history. .NET is a copy of Java. Windows is a copy of MacOS. Excel is a copy of Visicalc and Lotus 123, Word is a copy of WordStar and WordPerfect, PowerPoint a copy of Harvard Graphics and Aldus Persuasion, and Access a copy of dBASE and FoxPro. What about Microsoft makes them not innovate? To innovate you have to hire smart developers and let them do what they love doing. This will result in some waste, as only some of the ideas will be successful financially. But the ones that succeed will be innovative. Microsoft doesn't do that. They hire good developers and assign them to a Program Manager who gives them a fully nailed-down spec for what to build. Inevitably the Program Manager (who are often business people) will find financially successful products to clone. This rarely results in waste as the product they are cloning has already created a market, Microsoft only needs to take the market from the innovator, which they do by bundling the product with either Office or Windows.
  - dchuk 2y ago
    While I don’t disagree that Microsoft isn’t necessarily the most innovative, Apple is absolutely the most successful example of “first mover advantage” not actually being an advantage, and second movers can often be the actual winners. Literally every product they have launched in the last few decades has had the category already defined, they just came in with so much more polish and elegance (and sharp marketing) that they just repeatedly obliterate and take over the category as if they invented it. I’ll never forget when they dedicated a minute or two in a keynote a few years ago to how they improved the volume indicator visual overlay in iOS to be less obtrusive like they talked to god himself to figure this out, when Android had that style for years…it was brilliant marketing. I say all of this as a die hard Apple guy.
    - asdefghyk 2y ago
      RE ....Microsoft isn’t necessarily the most innovative.... Did you know Microsoft copied the idea of product activation from a PATENT and got fined about $300M USD for stealing the IP. Google the words Microsoft's fine for copying product activation idea, Ric Richardson for all the details .....
- Mistletoe 2y ago
  >What’s cool about the Dutch East India Company and Standard Oil is that there will never be another company like those two. They are true trailblazers in so many ways.
  - evidencetamper 2y ago
    What do you mean by that? I don't understand the comparison, but would like to. Is it about monopoly?
    - pickdan 2y ago
      It's just a joke about the ridiculousness that large economy dominating companies can't possibly be replaced and will last forever. Thus, instead of modern companies they give the example of two titans of vintage corporate might (one from several centuries ago and one more recent, just a century ago) are used instead. Ah, Hubris.
phendrenad2 2y ago
There are so few books on early Microsoft, and they're all so fascinating. One I like is Microsoft: First Generation. One I think is humorous, but not that informative, is Barbarians Led by Bill Gates.
- ozarker 2y ago
  I read Hard Drive by James Wallace and Jim Erickson a couple years ago. It was written between Windows 3.1 and 95. Super interesting to read Microsoft history from the perspective of that time period. I loved it.
- kristopolous 2y ago
  try Computer Wars: How the West Can Win in a Post-IBM World. By Charles H. Ferguson from 1993. The author is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ferguson_(filmmaker) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ferguson_(filmmaker) this one
- piokoch 2y ago
  Maybe after all the whole story is not that fascinating? Bill was coming from the wealthy family, his mum was IBM VP and gave his son a contract to sell operating system, even though there were better alternatives on the market. Ye good ol' story about corporate corruption that gave us such amazing products like Internet Explorer 6, Windows 98 Millenium Edition or Windows Vista. We could've lived in a so much better World if we didn't have to deal for years with crappy Microsoft operating system and other MS products.
  - canucker2016 2y ago
    Bill Gates's mom and the chairman of IBM were on the executive committee of the same charity, the United Way. from https://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/11/obituaries/mary-gates-64-helped-her-son-start-microsoft.html https://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/11/obituaries/mary-gates-64-... She was later appointed to the board of the United Way of America; in 1983, she became the first woman to lead it. Right Time, Right Place Her tenure on the national board's executive committee is believed to have helped Microsoft, based in Seattle, at a crucial time. In 1980, she discussed with John R. Opel, a fellow committee member who was the chairman of the International Business Machines Corporation, the business that I.B.M. was doing with Microsoft. Mr. Opel, by some accounts, mentioned Mrs. Gates to other I.B.M. executives. A few weeks later, I.B.M. took a chance by hiring Microsoft, then a small software firm, to develop an operating system for its first personal computer.
bustling-noose 2y ago
While the majority of revenue of Microsoft is not Windows anymore, I think Windows defines the brand much like how iPhone and Mac define Apple even though that might be part of the revenue not all of it. What I am curious about is what happens when the original product that makes the company popular starts to experience poor quality. Take Google for example, its search has been on a decline in the last decade or so and needless to say the company is experiencing problems as well in the last few years. While GCP and GSuite are significant, people have lost faith in Google which probably started with search. Windows 11 and the iPhone seem to be heading towards same fate as Google search imo.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  Google’s product is ads and GCP is an insignificant player in the cloud space. When I was at AWS ProServe, we never took GCP as a serious competitor. GSuite still hasn’t made any inroads into the enterprise of governments where the money is.
  - umeshunni 2y ago
    Google Cloud revenues were $48B in 2024 vs $109B for AWS. It's silly to call that insignificant.
    - trentlott 2y ago
      But if we represent it as a percentage we can pretend it's relatively not a big deal and minimize their stranglehold on society.
      - scarface_74 2y ago
        GCP has a stranglehold on society? Everyone who uses Chrome on Windows, Macs, and iPhones makes a choice to use it. Everyone who uses Google makes a choice.
    - asteroidburger 2y ago
      Doesn't that include Google Workspace though? Sure, a dollar is a dollar, but presumably a huge chunk of that money is Workspace, meaning it's not going towards raw compute.
brcmthrowaway 2y ago
No Microsoft, no Half-Life.
TechDebtDevin 2y ago
Funny that they changed their name from 'Micro-Soft' to Microsoft.
finnjohnsen2 2y ago
I remember exactly that moment I first saw a Windows 95 bootup. First the new _animated_ boot splash with the ms-logo, then the elegant start up piano sound, the amazing new start button with a menu with so perfectly organized applications, settings and a run input. It was like stepping into the future. Windows 3.11 and dos 6.22 was normal yesterday, it worked, was cool and had all the stuff I loved to do - but after this day they felt dated and ancient. Such moments are rare. Microsoft rocked so hard
- exe34 2y ago
  > First the new _animated_ boot splash with the ms-logo, then the elegant start up piano sound, the amazing new start button with a menu with so perfectly organized applications, settings and a run input. It was like stepping into the future. Sadly that future is now behind us. Nowadays I struggle to figure out what is a button, excuse me, clickable.
- vishnugupta 2y ago
  I have similar vivid memories. I saw win 95 first in my room mate’s PC. I was completely blown away, like “what sorcery is this” level of mind blown.
- zozbot234 2y ago
  > It was like stepping into the future. More like stepping into the past with things that the Mac, Amiga and NeXT machines could do out-of-the-box in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I mean, 8.3 file names? Seriously? Who thought that these could be "user friendly"?
  - bboreham 2y ago
    Windows 95 allowed long file names with arbitrary dots. The path length (including full folder path and the file name) was limited to 260 characters.
- nelblu 2y ago
  One of my favourite memories of Windows 95 was - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqL1BLzn3qc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqL1BLzn3qc. It felt absolutely futuristic watching a video from a CD at that time.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
russellbeattie 2y ago
It's interesting that Microsoft was founded almost exactly a year before Apple (April 1st, 1976). I can't imagine Apple will miss the opportunity to make a big deal out of it.
Taniwha 2y ago
When I was at uni in NZ (mid 70s) me and my friends wrote a compiler for 6800s (an algol subset, it fit in 2k), we wrote it with copyrights for "uSoft" (that's a greek mu), in retrospect it was an obvious name at the time. Later we discovered some other guys using the same name in the US (also with a mu) they had a basic interpreter, how lame! (we had a compiler) however we really didn't understand the advantages of being born in the right place ..... I really wish we'd incorporated, we could have sold the name for some silly amount of money
- jll29 2y ago
  Not just "incorporated", you would also have to have ported it to various computers that were sold (as MSFT did - and that Bill Gates' parents were lawyers with IBM contacts helped a lot). NZ is a fantastic country, but is relatively remote from larger markets, and its own population isn't large enough for the economics of scale to apply only locally. So even if you had tried, you may have failed. As you rightly say, power of location. On the other hand, now, due to globalization, things are possible there, too - for example, the app market is not limited geographically. BTW, you should consider uploading your old compiler's code on GitHub if you still have it; there is increased interest in "software archeology" now, given that so many emulators have been built.
  - Taniwha 2y ago
    I was more talking about owning the name in NZ (and maybe Oz) The software source was on cards (developed on a simulator on a uni mainframe, much like Microsoft were developing their code), sadly the cards were left behind when I moved to the US a decade later
- ErigmolCt 2y ago
  That's such a great story and such a classic case of being just ahead of the curve but in the wrong corner of the world.
  - Rodeoclash 2y ago
    I worked in a digital technology company in Wellington in the 90s and one of our key technologies that we sold was a hosted form on a secure (remember, this is the era that https was not common) website to collect credit card payments. We were a proto Stripe in the year 1999 but totally in the wrong place in the world to take advantage of it.
Almondsetat 2y ago
Windows Recall
rollcat 2y ago
It's also almost 50 years since "An Open Letter to Hobbyists"[1]. It's amazing that in the last 30+ years, the "hobbyists" managed to turn the entire software industry by 180°, and that Microsoft themselves are reliant on that work. Bill even specifically mentions musicians. By 1976, when blues was only ca 100 years old, most bands would play what we now call "covers", credit each original writer on the back of the record, and there was no shame or stigma around it. Art builds on art, and "stealing" is probably the most important part of the process[2]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists [2]: https://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/ https://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/
- anon_e-moose 2y ago
  > Art builds on art, and "stealing" is probably the most important part of the process[2]. > [2]: https://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/ https://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/ Nice try ChatGPT stealing from studio ghibli and Scarlett Johansson are still two egregious examples of what can kill artist's motivations. Why create or publish if credit is not given?
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    Downvote for low quality "nice try".
  - rollcat 2y ago
    True, virtually all companies harvesting LLM training datasets don't bother honouring even the most permissive licenses, like MIT or BSD - Microsoft leading the pack with Github and Copilot. You're right to point out that the tide is shifting again. Perhaps at the end of this bubble, society and/or the behemoth companies will recognise the value and help build a more sustainable future for artists and creators. I'm cautiously optimistic.
  - mediumsmart 2y ago
    > Why create or publish if credit is not given? That is true for content creators. Real artists don’t have a choice. They have to create art.
sunrisegeek 2y ago
Crazy to think how Microsoft went from a small startup to one of the biggest companies in the world. Wonder what the next 50 years will look like.
- warmandsoft 2y ago
  [flagged]
stu2184 2y ago
Actual Code https://images.gatesnotes.com/12514eb8-7b51-008e-41a9-512542cf683b/34d561c8-cf5c-4e69-af47-3782ea11482e/Original-Microsoft-Source-Code.pdf https://images.gatesnotes.com/12514eb8-7b51-008e-41a9-512542...
ErigmolCt 2y ago
What struck me most in this piece wasn't just the milestones or big product moments, but how human the journey was. From someone getting hired off a newsletter in a Honda Civic to negotiating with the Rolling Stones, or building a global business with zero prior international experience. It's a reminder that behind all the megacorp mythology, these were regular people taking huge risks.
0xEF 2y ago
"Remember when things were not insanely bloated and we all knew what we were collectively doing?" they all said, a wistful tear developing in each of their eyes, nobody daring to release theirs first. Nah, Happy Anniversary, Microsoft. As much as we do not get along, you did do _some_ good in the world.
hnthrowaway0315 2y ago
https://images.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/03262025_1-windows-1_125900.jpg https://images.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0... This development environment looks interesting：why two shelves? Also the place look like a cheap airline cabin. I thought all MSFT employees have their own offices back then. Maybe it's because that's the lab?
- muststopmyths 2y ago
  The caption says 1995, so this is most definitely one of the test labs. We used to have rows of shelves with PCs in various hardware configurations that were tested with daily builds. Everyone did have their own offices in the early-mid 90s. By the late 90s we were sharing, depending on seniority (years in the company, not title, which was refreshing).
- kevstev 2y ago
  This picture without context gave me QA or build lab type vibes, and the caption in the story confirmed that. They had to test on all kinds of configurations and hardware, so this makes sense- tbh I am surprised its this small. Remote tools didn't really exist in those days, and even if they did, they are unlikely to work if the OS is having issues. So you run a test, find an issue, and if its hard to reproduce you might just have to bring the dev into the lab to get on the box to understand what happened. It looks very similar to a QA Lab at a place I worked at in the early 2000s. They essentially commandeered a larger conference room and there were just (cpu) boxes everywhere.
- grork 2y ago
  This is a build or test lab, not the offices of developers. I visited multiple times in the period mentioned for the picture, and saw multiple of these. The one I saw most often was the NT build lab. When I started there in the mid-2000s, these labs were still used, although the build labs were a little less densely packed thanks to remote tools.
  - artursapek 2y ago
    Yep looks like the build lab described in the book Showstopper. I think there were even photos of this room in there.
nocarrier 2y ago
I loved how the Windows 95 install CD had Weezer's Buddy Holly video on it. I remember finding it and thinking it was so cool they did that.
- mtmail 2y ago
  And the trailer to Rob Roy. (Why do I even remember this??) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al8YJGwn9Y8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al8YJGwn9Y8
warmandsoft 2y ago
[...] "Microsoft killed my company, and I hold a personal grudge. They are a company with vicious, predatory, anti-competitive business practices, and always have been. They also happen to make terrible products, and always have. I do not use any Microsoft products, and neither should you." - Jamie Zawinski https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/xscreensaver-windows.html https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/xscreensaver-windows.html
- unclad5968 2y ago
  That guy hates MS because they included a web browser with their OS? Then he complains about being sent porn when he asks people to stop redistribution of his permissively licensed project while he shows me a hairy scrotum. Seems a little irrational.
  - weard_beard 2y ago
    Stress is a minor form of torture. Torture itself is irrational, but so are the things that humans will do or say when subjected to it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hghczTVgav0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hghczTVgav0
glimshe 2y ago
I joined MSFT ~25 years ago and worked there for 10 years. It was a great place to work. Everybody (in Redmond) had their offices, great outdoor areas for walking and meeting people, great conference areas, decent and relatively affordable places to live nearby (some within walking distance), some of the best Engineers in the world etc. I don't think there is a company life like MSFT used to have anywhere on Earth nowadays. :(

162 points by rmason 2y ago

https://archive.ph/WIAoq https://archive.ph/WIAoq

What’s cool about MSFT and APPLE is that there will never be another company like those two. They are true trailblazers in so many ways.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
bushbaba 2y ago
Amazon? Google? Meta? Tencent? etc etc etc
- scarface_74 2y ago
  Google is an ad company that can’t make another significant product to save its life. Meta under Zuckerberg has been able to stay relevant. But FB is already seen as being for old people.
- CharlesW 2y ago
  Apple and Microsoft (as well as companies like Commodore) were there for personal computing’s birth. Amazon, Google and Meta came far later and didn’t invent their respective industries.
  - 9rx 2y ago
    HP sold what they called a "personal computer" in the 1960s, well before Apple and Microsoft came around. It wasn't exactly what we consider to be a personal computer nowadays, but MySpace wasn't exactly what we consider social media to be today either. I'm not sure these things happen in discrete steps like you seem to imply. There is a clear continuum. I think it is quite fair to say, for example, that Meta help define its industry like Microsoft and Apple helped define theirs. There will never be exact replicas of Apple and Microsoft again, but there undoubtedly will be many companies in the future that we will eventually look back upon in the same way.
    - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
      You are confusing the first personal computer with the rise of personal computing. Inventing a product isn’t very useful if you don’t invent the product market as well.
      - 9rx 2y ago
        Huh? The entire comment is about that rise. Did you stop reading after the first few words?
  - pests 2y ago
    Amazon did quite literally invent their respective industries - AWS and the cloud?
breadwinner 2y ago
That's absurd. Trailblazer means a pioneer; an innovator. Apple is one. Microsoft isn't. Microsoft is known for copying ideas, not for innovating. If there is one thing that hasn't changed in 50 years, it is the fact that they don't innovate. Take their recent products: Teams is a copy of Slack. Loop is a copy of Notion. This has been going on throughout their history. .NET is a copy of Java. Windows is a copy of MacOS. Excel is a copy of Visicalc and Lotus 123, Word is a copy of WordStar and WordPerfect, PowerPoint a copy of Harvard Graphics and Aldus Persuasion, and Access a copy of dBASE and FoxPro. What about Microsoft makes them not innovate? To innovate you have to hire smart developers and let them do what they love doing. This will result in some waste, as only some of the ideas will be successful financially. But the ones that succeed will be innovative. Microsoft doesn't do that. They hire good developers and assign them to a Program Manager who gives them a fully nailed-down spec for what to build. Inevitably the Program Manager (who are often business people) will find financially successful products to clone. This rarely results in waste as the product they are cloning has already created a market, Microsoft only needs to take the market from the innovator, which they do by bundling the product with either Office or Windows.
- dchuk 2y ago
  While I don’t disagree that Microsoft isn’t necessarily the most innovative, Apple is absolutely the most successful example of “first mover advantage” not actually being an advantage, and second movers can often be the actual winners. Literally every product they have launched in the last few decades has had the category already defined, they just came in with so much more polish and elegance (and sharp marketing) that they just repeatedly obliterate and take over the category as if they invented it. I’ll never forget when they dedicated a minute or two in a keynote a few years ago to how they improved the volume indicator visual overlay in iOS to be less obtrusive like they talked to god himself to figure this out, when Android had that style for years…it was brilliant marketing. I say all of this as a die hard Apple guy.
  - asdefghyk 2y ago
    RE ....Microsoft isn’t necessarily the most innovative.... Did you know Microsoft copied the idea of product activation from a PATENT and got fined about $300M USD for stealing the IP. Google the words Microsoft's fine for copying product activation idea, Ric Richardson for all the details .....
Mistletoe 2y ago
>What’s cool about the Dutch East India Company and Standard Oil is that there will never be another company like those two. They are true trailblazers in so many ways.
- evidencetamper 2y ago
  What do you mean by that? I don't understand the comparison, but would like to. Is it about monopoly?
  - pickdan 2y ago
    It's just a joke about the ridiculousness that large economy dominating companies can't possibly be replaced and will last forever. Thus, instead of modern companies they give the example of two titans of vintage corporate might (one from several centuries ago and one more recent, just a century ago) are used instead. Ah, Hubris.

phendrenad2 2y ago

There are so few books on early Microsoft, and they're all so fascinating. One I like is Microsoft: First Generation. One I think is humorous, but not that informative, is Barbarians Led by Bill Gates.

ozarker 2y ago
I read Hard Drive by James Wallace and Jim Erickson a couple years ago. It was written between Windows 3.1 and 95. Super interesting to read Microsoft history from the perspective of that time period. I loved it.
kristopolous 2y ago
try Computer Wars: How the West Can Win in a Post-IBM World. By Charles H. Ferguson from 1993. The author is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ferguson_(filmmaker) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ferguson_(filmmaker) this one
piokoch 2y ago
Maybe after all the whole story is not that fascinating? Bill was coming from the wealthy family, his mum was IBM VP and gave his son a contract to sell operating system, even though there were better alternatives on the market. Ye good ol' story about corporate corruption that gave us such amazing products like Internet Explorer 6, Windows 98 Millenium Edition or Windows Vista. We could've lived in a so much better World if we didn't have to deal for years with crappy Microsoft operating system and other MS products.
- canucker2016 2y ago
  Bill Gates's mom and the chairman of IBM were on the executive committee of the same charity, the United Way. from https://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/11/obituaries/mary-gates-64-helped-her-son-start-microsoft.html https://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/11/obituaries/mary-gates-64-... She was later appointed to the board of the United Way of America; in 1983, she became the first woman to lead it. Right Time, Right Place Her tenure on the national board's executive committee is believed to have helped Microsoft, based in Seattle, at a crucial time. In 1980, she discussed with John R. Opel, a fellow committee member who was the chairman of the International Business Machines Corporation, the business that I.B.M. was doing with Microsoft. Mr. Opel, by some accounts, mentioned Mrs. Gates to other I.B.M. executives. A few weeks later, I.B.M. took a chance by hiring Microsoft, then a small software firm, to develop an operating system for its first personal computer.

bustling-noose 2y ago

While the majority of revenue of Microsoft is not Windows anymore, I think Windows defines the brand much like how iPhone and Mac define Apple even though that might be part of the revenue not all of it. What I am curious about is what happens when the original product that makes the company popular starts to experience poor quality. Take Google for example, its search has been on a decline in the last decade or so and needless to say the company is experiencing problems as well in the last few years. While GCP and GSuite are significant, people have lost faith in Google which probably started with search. Windows 11 and the iPhone seem to be heading towards same fate as Google search imo.

scarface_74 2y ago
Google’s product is ads and GCP is an insignificant player in the cloud space. When I was at AWS ProServe, we never took GCP as a serious competitor. GSuite still hasn’t made any inroads into the enterprise of governments where the money is.
- umeshunni 2y ago
  Google Cloud revenues were $48B in 2024 vs $109B for AWS. It's silly to call that insignificant.
  - trentlott 2y ago
    But if we represent it as a percentage we can pretend it's relatively not a big deal and minimize their stranglehold on society.
    - scarface_74 2y ago
      GCP has a stranglehold on society? Everyone who uses Chrome on Windows, Macs, and iPhones makes a choice to use it. Everyone who uses Google makes a choice.
  - asteroidburger 2y ago
    Doesn't that include Google Workspace though? Sure, a dollar is a dollar, but presumably a huge chunk of that money is Workspace, meaning it's not going towards raw compute.

brcmthrowaway 2y ago

No Microsoft, no Half-Life.

TechDebtDevin 2y ago

Funny that they changed their name from 'Micro-Soft' to Microsoft.

finnjohnsen2 2y ago

I remember exactly that moment I first saw a Windows 95 bootup. First the new _animated_ boot splash with the ms-logo, then the elegant start up piano sound, the amazing new start button with a menu with so perfectly organized applications, settings and a run input. It was like stepping into the future. Windows 3.11 and dos 6.22 was normal yesterday, it worked, was cool and had all the stuff I loved to do - but after this day they felt dated and ancient. Such moments are rare. Microsoft rocked so hard

exe34 2y ago
> First the new _animated_ boot splash with the ms-logo, then the elegant start up piano sound, the amazing new start button with a menu with so perfectly organized applications, settings and a run input. It was like stepping into the future. Sadly that future is now behind us. Nowadays I struggle to figure out what is a button, excuse me, clickable.
vishnugupta 2y ago
I have similar vivid memories. I saw win 95 first in my room mate’s PC. I was completely blown away, like “what sorcery is this” level of mind blown.
zozbot234 2y ago
> It was like stepping into the future. More like stepping into the past with things that the Mac, Amiga and NeXT machines could do out-of-the-box in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I mean, 8.3 file names? Seriously? Who thought that these could be "user friendly"?
- bboreham 2y ago
  Windows 95 allowed long file names with arbitrary dots. The path length (including full folder path and the file name) was limited to 260 characters.
nelblu 2y ago
One of my favourite memories of Windows 95 was - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqL1BLzn3qc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqL1BLzn3qc. It felt absolutely futuristic watching a video from a CD at that time.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

russellbeattie 2y ago

It's interesting that Microsoft was founded almost exactly a year before Apple (April 1st, 1976). I can't imagine Apple will miss the opportunity to make a big deal out of it.

Taniwha 2y ago

When I was at uni in NZ (mid 70s) me and my friends wrote a compiler for 6800s (an algol subset, it fit in 2k), we wrote it with copyrights for "uSoft" (that's a greek mu), in retrospect it was an obvious name at the time. Later we discovered some other guys using the same name in the US (also with a mu) they had a basic interpreter, how lame! (we had a compiler) however we really didn't understand the advantages of being born in the right place ..... I really wish we'd incorporated, we could have sold the name for some silly amount of money

jll29 2y ago
Not just "incorporated", you would also have to have ported it to various computers that were sold (as MSFT did - and that Bill Gates' parents were lawyers with IBM contacts helped a lot). NZ is a fantastic country, but is relatively remote from larger markets, and its own population isn't large enough for the economics of scale to apply only locally. So even if you had tried, you may have failed. As you rightly say, power of location. On the other hand, now, due to globalization, things are possible there, too - for example, the app market is not limited geographically. BTW, you should consider uploading your old compiler's code on GitHub if you still have it; there is increased interest in "software archeology" now, given that so many emulators have been built.
- Taniwha 2y ago
  I was more talking about owning the name in NZ (and maybe Oz) The software source was on cards (developed on a simulator on a uni mainframe, much like Microsoft were developing their code), sadly the cards were left behind when I moved to the US a decade later
ErigmolCt 2y ago
That's such a great story and such a classic case of being just ahead of the curve but in the wrong corner of the world.
- Rodeoclash 2y ago
  I worked in a digital technology company in Wellington in the 90s and one of our key technologies that we sold was a hosted form on a secure (remember, this is the era that https was not common) website to collect credit card payments. We were a proto Stripe in the year 1999 but totally in the wrong place in the world to take advantage of it.

Almondsetat 2y ago

Windows Recall

rollcat 2y ago

It's also almost 50 years since "An Open Letter to Hobbyists"[1]. It's amazing that in the last 30+ years, the "hobbyists" managed to turn the entire software industry by 180°, and that Microsoft themselves are reliant on that work. Bill even specifically mentions musicians. By 1976, when blues was only ca 100 years old, most bands would play what we now call "covers", credit each original writer on the back of the record, and there was no shame or stigma around it. Art builds on art, and "stealing" is probably the most important part of the process[2]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists [2]: https://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/ https://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/

anon_e-moose 2y ago
> Art builds on art, and "stealing" is probably the most important part of the process[2]. > [2]: https://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/ https://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/ Nice try ChatGPT stealing from studio ghibli and Scarlett Johansson are still two egregious examples of what can kill artist's motivations. Why create or publish if credit is not given?
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  Downvote for low quality "nice try".
- rollcat 2y ago
  True, virtually all companies harvesting LLM training datasets don't bother honouring even the most permissive licenses, like MIT or BSD - Microsoft leading the pack with Github and Copilot. You're right to point out that the tide is shifting again. Perhaps at the end of this bubble, society and/or the behemoth companies will recognise the value and help build a more sustainable future for artists and creators. I'm cautiously optimistic.
- mediumsmart 2y ago
  > Why create or publish if credit is not given? That is true for content creators. Real artists don’t have a choice. They have to create art.

sunrisegeek 2y ago

Crazy to think how Microsoft went from a small startup to one of the biggest companies in the world. Wonder what the next 50 years will look like.

warmandsoft 2y ago
[flagged]

stu2184 2y ago

Actual Code https://images.gatesnotes.com/12514eb8-7b51-008e-41a9-512542cf683b/34d561c8-cf5c-4e69-af47-3782ea11482e/Original-Microsoft-Source-Code.pdf https://images.gatesnotes.com/12514eb8-7b51-008e-41a9-512542...

ErigmolCt 2y ago

What struck me most in this piece wasn't just the milestones or big product moments, but how human the journey was. From someone getting hired off a newsletter in a Honda Civic to negotiating with the Rolling Stones, or building a global business with zero prior international experience. It's a reminder that behind all the megacorp mythology, these were regular people taking huge risks.

0xEF 2y ago

"Remember when things were not insanely bloated and we all knew what we were collectively doing?" they all said, a wistful tear developing in each of their eyes, nobody daring to release theirs first. Nah, Happy Anniversary, Microsoft. As much as we do not get along, you did do _some_ good in the world.

hnthrowaway0315 2y ago

https://images.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/03262025_1-windows-1_125900.jpg https://images.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/0... This development environment looks interesting：why two shelves? Also the place look like a cheap airline cabin. I thought all MSFT employees have their own offices back then. Maybe it's because that's the lab?

muststopmyths 2y ago
The caption says 1995, so this is most definitely one of the test labs. We used to have rows of shelves with PCs in various hardware configurations that were tested with daily builds. Everyone did have their own offices in the early-mid 90s. By the late 90s we were sharing, depending on seniority (years in the company, not title, which was refreshing).
kevstev 2y ago
This picture without context gave me QA or build lab type vibes, and the caption in the story confirmed that. They had to test on all kinds of configurations and hardware, so this makes sense- tbh I am surprised its this small. Remote tools didn't really exist in those days, and even if they did, they are unlikely to work if the OS is having issues. So you run a test, find an issue, and if its hard to reproduce you might just have to bring the dev into the lab to get on the box to understand what happened. It looks very similar to a QA Lab at a place I worked at in the early 2000s. They essentially commandeered a larger conference room and there were just (cpu) boxes everywhere.
grork 2y ago
This is a build or test lab, not the offices of developers. I visited multiple times in the period mentioned for the picture, and saw multiple of these. The one I saw most often was the NT build lab. When I started there in the mid-2000s, these labs were still used, although the build labs were a little less densely packed thanks to remote tools.
- artursapek 2y ago
  Yep looks like the build lab described in the book Showstopper. I think there were even photos of this room in there.

nocarrier 2y ago

I loved how the Windows 95 install CD had Weezer's Buddy Holly video on it. I remember finding it and thinking it was so cool they did that.

mtmail 2y ago
And the trailer to Rob Roy. (Why do I even remember this??) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al8YJGwn9Y8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al8YJGwn9Y8

warmandsoft 2y ago

[...] "Microsoft killed my company, and I hold a personal grudge. They are a company with vicious, predatory, anti-competitive business practices, and always have been. They also happen to make terrible products, and always have. I do not use any Microsoft products, and neither should you." - Jamie Zawinski https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/xscreensaver-windows.html https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/xscreensaver-windows.html

unclad5968 2y ago
That guy hates MS because they included a web browser with their OS? Then he complains about being sent porn when he asks people to stop redistribution of his permissively licensed project while he shows me a hairy scrotum. Seems a little irrational.
- weard_beard 2y ago
  Stress is a minor form of torture. Torture itself is irrational, but so are the things that humans will do or say when subjected to it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hghczTVgav0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hghczTVgav0

glimshe 2y ago

I joined MSFT ~25 years ago and worked there for 10 years. It was a great place to work. Everybody (in Redmond) had their offices, great outdoor areas for walking and meeting people, great conference areas, decent and relatively affordable places to live nearby (some within walking distance), some of the best Engineers in the world etc. I don't think there is a company life like MSFT used to have anywhere on Earth nowadays. :(